Gotye goes bossa in big business of money and music

A BRAZILIAN musician who has been dead for more than a decade is top of the pops in the US thanks to Melbourne's Wally de Backer, better known as Gotye.

The Brazilian guitarist and composer Luiz Bonfa, who died aged 78 in 2001, wrote and played the opening hook in Gotye's single Somebody That I Used to Know, which has become the first Australian single to top the main US chart since Savage Garden's I Knew I Loved You in January 2000.

Bonfa was a pioneer of Brazilian jazz, best known for his track Manha de Carnaval (Morning of Carnival) from the 1959 film Black Orpheus.

However, it is a mere two notes from his 1967 song Seville that have put Bonfa at the top of the US charts - and sent a stream of royalty payments into the coffers of his estate.

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The D and C notes, played on a nylon-string guitar at the start of Seville, form the spine of Gotye's song, a debt he has readily acknowledged.

''That Luiz Bonfa sample directly prompted the first line of lyrics,'' Gotye told American music industry bible Billboard last week. ''The back and forth left me thinking about these different break-ups and different relationships over the years, and the lyrics flowed from there.''

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Although the snippet used in the song is minimal, Gotye's Melbourne-based lawyer David Vodicka confirmed the Bonfa estate received a split of royalties rather than a straight fee for use. He did not reveal how the royalties were split, but the Australasian Performing Right Association lists de Backer and Bonfa as joint-writers of the song.

Assuming the 8.9 per cent APRA royalty is split jointly, the Bonfa estate's cut on the 4.5 million copies of the single that have been sold around the world to date could top $300,000.

The song's success doesn't stop there, though. De Backer and Kimbra, the New Zealand singer who features on the track, also receive performing royalties on sales and each time the song is played.

The video clip has been watched more than 167 million times on Gotye's YouTube channel; views for all his videos now exceed 190 million. As one industry figure put it: ''The deals are complicated, but even at fractions of fractions of cents there's a revenue stream there.''

There are also remixes and cover versions, including one from last week's episode of Glee, available as singles, while the video for the cover by Canadian folk outfit Walk Off The Earth has been watched more than 90 million times and spawned an internet meme of its own.

Cheekily, some observers have noted that Gotye, an inveterate sampler of old vinyl, also appears to have borrowed from Baa Baa Black Sheep for the song's second hook, played on glockenspiel.

If so, the rights holders have been fleeced - they get neither a credit nor a share of royalties.